Emergency Wireless Systems in Vehicles Gain Momentum
GENEVA -- Public safety answering points (PSAP) are struggling with 9-1-1 emergency wireless calls that are difficult to locate, officials said here Thurs. Officials added that if VoIP hits the mainstream and the mass market abandons landlines, the 9-1-1 system could be in real trouble,
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
“Wireless and VoIP… could basically kill 9-1-1 in America because with VoIP we don’t necessarily know where the person is, and with wireless we don’t necessarily know where the person is,” said consultant Bob Miller, former exec. dir. of 9-1-1 for the state of N.J., which has the largest 9-1-1 network in the U.S. Plans are underway to build a new 9-1-1 network that will evolve as the next generation E9-1-1 network, officials said.
New features desired in the network are additional call location information, more information from crashes, the ability to pass a 9-1-1 call to other networks, the ability to identify callers on a multi-line telephone system (MLTS) such as PBX and to migrate to an Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) architecture, speakers said.
“Some of the components… in next generation network are not yet ready -- or perhaps -- reliable enough to handle 9-1-1,” said Miller: “And no one can give a date, for sure, when they will be. Even though these new features will have ways to handle crash data, we can’t wait for this… DOT has predicted 51,000 crash deaths this year; 35% of U.S. vehicle deaths are within 10 minutes of the crash, 43% within 30, 56% in the first hour.”
Integration of data with emergency calls has the real possibility to decrease response times and mitigate injury and reduce the possibility of death from automobile accidents, officials said. Separating a voice call from a data call from a vehicle means data can be sent at a substantially higher power and has a much greater chance of getting through in a wider variety of geographical conditions, said Russ Shields of Ygomi.
“We really love what OnStar and ATX have done… but it needs to get into the 9-1-1 network,” said Miller. Once a telematics service provider (TSP) determines a call should be routed to emergency services, they could initiate a 9-1-1 call from the embedded equipment in the vehicle. With GPS in the car, the location is known and once the crash data is picked, rescue authorities can even know the language, Miller added.
Emergency wireless calls in Japan have doubled since 1997, now accounting for 57% of emergency calls. Response times have risen by 20% since 1997, officials said. HELP (Help System for Emergency Life Saving and Public Safety) was developed under Japan’s Universal Traffic Management Systems (UTMS) and transmits location information obtained from GPS, plus vehicle ID and time, from equipment embedded in the vehicle to a call center and has reduced the time lag until the accident is reported by 40%.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has made it very clear that safety functions put into a car have to work for the life of the car, which now averages 13 years in the U.S. said Russ Shields of Ygomi. That’s incredibly difficult considering the rapid evolution of the telecom industry and the fact that automobile manufacturers are working on car designs that will hit the market almost 10 years from now, officials said.
Europe’s eCall will provide emergency services from a vehicle as standard equipment starting in 2010. In the event of an accident, GPS data, vehicle ID and time of the incident are transmitted. A voice link can be initiated if needed, said Wolfgang Reinhardt, dir.-regulatory affairs at the European Automobile Manufacturers Assn. and co-chair of the eCall Driving Group set up under the European safety program.